The full USADA report on Alberto Salazar has been leaked - Here it is

KMB wrote:

Is this summary right? wrote:

I am not following your post. I will recap thoughts / questions.

1. Are these serious violations? USADA has not taken any action or issued a report. This is a draft report prepared for a hearing.

It would certainly seem that this draft report is aimed at ultimately taking action, right? I don't know what other purpose it would serve.

USADA seems intent on proving that the greater-than-50-ml infusion in under 4 hours rule was willfully violated. Something like 60 percent of the pages in the report are devoted to the topic of the L-carnitine administration (I believe).

As to how "serious" this violation is, USADA can suspend athletes on the basis of any violations they want, as far as I know. I don't think they deal a lot in nuance when it comes to this issue because that would be a minefield -- things like "Well, OK, his T:E ratio was in the 'used T' range, but not by *that* much" would be cropping up everywhere.

Is this summary right? wrote:

2. How unusual is this? I would like to see a USADA report with some context. Other athletes take asthma meds, thyroid meds, vitamin D, etc., which are not banned. How different is what Brown / Salazar doing from what Brown does with other athletes (the L-Carnitine seems to be the biggest difference)? Did Brown provide similar treatment to other athletes? Do other doctors provide athletes with similar treatments?

The answers to those questions don't matter for present purposes. All that is at issue here is whether a doping violation was committed. Even if you could show that half of all MLB players use either steroids, hGH or some sort of amphetamine or other banned stimulant, this wouldn't get anyone off the hook.

Is this summary right? wrote:

3. If athletes think Dr. Brown committed medical malpractice, they should report that.

True but not relevant. "Shoulds" do not enter into the equation here, do they?

Is this summary right? wrote:

4. If athletes wanted treatment that they thought it was within the rules but was not, then they had bad luck. That is especially true if USADA takes action and declares a serious violation. For example, Tyson Gay says he trusted people and took stuff. (You can believe him or not.) Lauryn Williams, in another context, said she was offered things and did not accept. Tyson Gay was responsible and suspended.

Agreed, if they are telling the truth and were actually given banned substances and took them thinking they were on the level, then they have the bad luck of exercising apocalyptically shitty judgment. Does it really surprise you how many athletes try the "I didn't know" excuse, from Dieter Baumann and his spiked toothpaste to Gatlin and his saboteur-masseur? It's convenient if nothing else and muddies the legal waters nicely.

Is this summary right? wrote:

5. To your point (or what I think is your point), its natural that people feel remorse if they did something wrong. I am questioning athletes who say they were forced into something that they did not want to do. These are pro athletes who are well compensated. If they did not want to take asthma meds, cytomel, or the IV - then simply don't do it. Don't say 'I did not want to but I had to.'

Again, a post hoc advisory to not do something shady is well-intentioned on your part, perhaps, but shallow. If you like, and assuming you believe that violations have indeed occurred, you can place most of the moral burden in this case on the coaches rather than on the athletes. Maybe even all of it. Besides, I think most people are more or less in agreement with you here anyway -- the prevailing sense I get is that the real villains here are more Salazar and the medical personnel in his orbit than the humans he's experimenting on. I think Salazar is about the worst thing that has happened to U.S. professional running in a long time, a sociopathic persona allowed to run riot over the sport thanks to having a supremely powerful organization to back him. All the money, protection, and misguided will in the world has created the perfect storm of pharmacological-athletic chaos. And I'll be astonished if the L-carnitine infusions turn out to be any less than a mere portal of entry for the authorities to become more strongly involved and start issuing subpoenas left and right.

KMB wrote:

Is this summary right? wrote:

I am not following your post. I will recap thoughts / questions.

1. Are these serious violations? USADA has not taken any action or issued a report. This is a draft report prepared for a hearing.

It would certainly seem that this draft report is aimed at ultimately taking action, right? I don't know what other purpose it would serve.

USADA seems intent on proving that the greater-than-50-ml infusion in under 4 hours rule was willfully violated. Something like 60 percent of the pages in the report are devoted to the topic of the L-carnitine administration (I believe).

As to how "serious" this violation is, USADA can suspend athletes on the basis of any violations they want, as far as I know. I don't think they deal a lot in nuance when it comes to this issue because that would be a minefield -- things like "Well, OK, his T:E ratio was in the 'used T' range, but not by *that* much" would be cropping up everywhere.

Is this summary right? wrote:

2. How unusual is this? I would like to see a USADA report with some context. Other athletes take asthma meds, thyroid meds, vitamin D, etc., which are not banned. How different is what Brown / Salazar doing from what Brown does with other athletes (the L-Carnitine seems to be the biggest difference)? Did Brown provide similar treatment to other athletes? Do other doctors provide athletes with similar treatments?

The answers to those questions don't matter for present purposes. All that is at issue here is whether a doping violation was committed. Even if you could show that half of all MLB players use either steroids, hGH or some sort of amphetamine or other banned stimulant, this wouldn't get anyone off the hook.

Is this summary right? wrote:

3. If athletes think Dr. Brown committed medical malpractice, they should report that.

True but not relevant. "Shoulds" do not enter into the equation here, do they?

Is this summary right? wrote:

4. If athletes wanted treatment that they thought it was within the rules but was not, then they had bad luck. That is especially true if USADA takes action and declares a serious violation. For example, Tyson Gay says he trusted people and took stuff. (You can believe him or not.) Lauryn Williams, in another context, said she was offered things and did not accept. Tyson Gay was responsible and suspended.

Agreed, if they are telling the truth and were actually given banned substances and took them thinking they were on the level, then they have the bad luck of exercising apocalyptically shitty judgment. Does it really surprise you how many athletes try the "I didn't know" excuse, from Dieter Baumann and his spiked toothpaste to Gatlin and his saboteur-masseur? It's convenient if nothing else and muddies the legal waters nicely.

Is this summary right? wrote:

5. To your point (or what I think is your point), its natural that people feel remorse if they did something wrong. I am questioning athletes who say they were forced into something that they did not want to do. These are pro athletes who are well compensated. If they did not want to take asthma meds, cytomel, or the IV - then simply don't do it. Don't say 'I did not want to but I had to.'

Again, a post hoc advisory to not do something shady is well-intentioned on your part, perhaps, but shallow. If you like, and assuming you believe that violations have indeed occurred, you can place most of the moral burden in this case on the coaches rather than on the athletes. Maybe even all of it. Besides, I think most people are more or less in agreement with you here anyway -- the prevailing sense I get is that the real villains here are more Salazar and the medical personnel in his orbit than the humans he's experimenting on. I think Salazar is about the worst thing that has happened to U.S. professional running in a long time, a sociopathic persona allowed to run riot over the sport thanks to having a supremely powerful organization to back him. All the money, protection, and misguided will in the world has created the perfect storm of pharmacological-athletic chaos. And I'll be astonished if the L-carnitine infusions turn out to be any less than a mere portal of entry for the authorities to become more strongly involved and start issuing subpoenas left and right.

rojo wrote:

Now you are in total la-la-land. Your first statement may have simply been because you are scientist but the second is foolish. They didn't violate the spirit of the law? They 100% Did.

The anti-doping rules whole spirit is simple. They want competition to be about who is the best naturally. They don't want people taking potentially dangerous things that give them an athletic advantage.

Taking such a huge amount of L-Carnitine in an untested manner in such a short period of time to suddenly take 2-3 minutes off your marathon time is 100% in violation of the spirit of the law as it's both dangerous and designed to give you a huge, unnatural advantage.

From the report. "Potential side effects noted in the product literature for Carnitor® injectable L-carnitine include injection site reactions, adverse gastrointestinal reactions and seizures...Even in 50 mL of infusion solution (which the records provided to USADA by Dr. Brown deny was given), 9.67 grams of L-carnitine would be at the highest concentration level commercially available and far above (about 25 times higher than) the concentration recommended for infusion in humans."

The spirit of the law was broken a long time ago by Salazar - whether it's a doping violation or not. He's doing what every doper does - looking for a chemical way to increase performance regardless of health costs.

wejo wrote:

Harambe wrote:

2) NOP are finally cheaters because they broke the 50mL rule. However, they clearly didn't violate the spirit of the law here. That rule is solely to prevent dilutive transfusions to cover up PEDs. NOP infused >50mLs just to up some random metabolite levels and banned PEDs never came into play.

Where are you coming up with the spirit of the law thing? Alberto emailed USADA asking if he could violate the rule. They said no. The report presents strong evidence that he went and did it anyway.

When Alberto emailed USADA and said "hey we just want to inject l-carnitine" they didn't write back, "oh yeah are rules are wrong, the spirit of them is not to ban injections of legal substances but just to stop masking of doping. They wrote back and said essentially follow the rule."

As I read the report, I flagged multiple instances where Alberto professed to wanting to follow the rules, but by the time I got to the end of the report, it was clear to me they broke them.

rojo wrote:

Yes, i'm not a doctor. That's why I talked to a medical professional today and he laughed when I asked if it was possible it was under 50 ml.

He said to me,. "Do you have any concept of how little 50 ml is?" So I looked it up. It's 1.7 ounces. He's like, "Yep. Of course they had way more than that."

Harambe wrote:

2) NOP are finally cheaters because they broke the 50mL rule. However, they clearly didn't violate the spirit of the law here. That rule is solely to prevent dilutive transfusions to cover up PEDs. NOP infused >50mLs just to up some random metabolite levels and banned PEDs never came into play.

.

Now you are in total la-la-land. Your first statement may have simply been because you are scientist but the second is foolish. They didn't violate the spirit of the law? They 100% Did.

The anti-doping rules whole spirit is simple. They want competition to be about who is the best naturally. They don't want people taking potentially dangerous things that give them an athletic advantage.

Taking such a huge amount of L-Carnitine in an untested manner in such a short period of time to suddenly take 2-3 minutes off your marathon time is 100% in violation of the spirit of the law as it's both dangerous and designed to give you a huge, unnatural advantage.

From the report. "Potential side effects noted in the product literature for Carnitor® injectable L-carnitine include injection site reactions, adverse gastrointestinal reactions and seizures...Even in 50 mL of infusion solution (which the records provided to USADA by Dr. Brown deny was given), 9.67 grams of L-carnitine would be at the highest concentration level commercially available and far above (about 25 times higher than) the concentration recommended for infusion in humans."

The spirit of the law was broken a long time ago by Salazar - whether it's a doping violation or not. He's doing what every doper does - looking for a chemical way to increase performance regardless of health costs.